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4/30/18

The Trump administration appears to be closing in on a deal on a
revamped North American Free Trade Agreement, but is up against a very
tight political deadline to meet its goal of forcing a congressional
vote on a new pact by the end of the year.

After months of making little progress, high-level trade officials
from the U.S., Canada and Mexico indicate that negotiations have been
gaining momentum, and analysts monitoring the talks the last several
days said Friday that there was a fair chance of reaching an agreement
in principle in weeks or even days.

The president’s chief trade negotiator, Robert Lighthizer, plans to
continue discussions with his Canadian and Mexican counterparts in
Washington on May 7. They need to close gaps on sensitive matters
including trade in autos and farm goods and rules for handling
investment disputes.

Canada and Mexico, rather than make politically unpopular
concessions, may decide it better to prolong the talks, even at the risk
of a U.S. withdrawal from NAFTA, as President Donald Trump has
repeatedly threatened.

Moreover, Mr. Trump’s practice of lumping different issues together
for bargaining leverage has increased uncertainties about the fate of
negotiations.

Last month, Mr. Trump gave an exemption to Canada and Mexico on hefty
steel and aluminum tariffs, but only until May 1, saying what happens
afterward would depend on how rewriting NAFTA comes along.

On Monday, Mr. Trump suggested that a NAFTA overhaul should include
another one of his goals, tighter control of people entering from the
southern border.

“Mexico, whose laws on immigration are very tough, must stop people
from going through Mexico and into the U.S.,” the president said on
Twitter. “We may make this a condition of the new NAFTA agreement.”